Barron's impact: It's been a whirlwind four years

Feb. 23, 2014

FSU president Eric Barron delivers his third state of the university address at the fall general meeting of FSU's faculty on October 24, 2012 in Tallahassee, Fla. / Michael Schwarz/Special to the Democrat

Eric Barron walked into a hornet’s nest when he agreed in December 2009 to be Florida State University’s 14th president.

The faculty, furious that some of their tenured colleagues had been fired as FSU administrators coped with massive cuts in state support, would have been carrying pitchforks instead of smartphones had it been a much earlier era.

On the eve of Barron’s second meeting with the university’s board of trustees, on Sept. 22, 2010, the Faculty Senate gave voice to its collective frustration with a unanimous resolution condemning the administration, an almost unprecedented act by FSU’s professors. The primary author of the resolution was oceanography professor Bill Landing, whose department had been merged with two others during the university’s belt-tightening.

Barron stood against the back wall of the Faculty Senate meeting in Dodd Hall auditorium, disappointed but determined to mend fences. The resolution was directed at the previous administration, not his leadership.

Barron, an acclaimed climatologist with a strong background in academics, met with the professors from different departments. He listened, he assured them he wanted to work with them; at the same time he refused to be critical of decisions that were made before his arrival.

“It was a mess but it got better. It helped that (Barron) was open to faculty and had a good take on things,” Eric Walker, Faculty Senate president in 2010, said last week. “He worked the problem. He didn’t take the crisis as an occasion to do extreme actions. He was a steady hand, and that was what was useful at the time.”

His fingerprints are everywhere

Eric James Barron and his wife, Molly, are preparing to depart FSU on April 2 and return to State College, Pa., where Barron will be Penn State’s next president. Ten days ago no one at FSU other than Allan Bense, chairman of FSU’s board, had any inkling that Barron, 62, was about to leave a job he said he loved and that he said he intended to devote himself to for years to come.

Widely admired and respected by almost all of FSU’s stakeholders, from students to faculty, from alumni to staff, Barron leaves behind an impressive list of accomplishments that extend well beyond the Florida State campus.

Look around Tallahassee and his fingerprints are everywhere. Under his leadership, FSU acquired the Civic Center from Leon County and has vowed to renovate the 32-year-old arena and quasi convention space. Barron reached out to city, county and chamber of commerce leaders, joining the steering committee of Imagine Tallahassee as it sought to prioritize projects for the region’s future.

But Barron may have distinguished himself most of all as a leader who stood calm and firm during a crisis. His reaction to a deeply disgruntled faculty — the administration’s firing of tenured professors was overturned by an arbitrator, and Barron immediately reinstated even tenured professors who weren’t members of the faculty union — is by no means the only example.

Trustees at Penn State, where Barron was on the faculty from 1986 to 2006, cited his leadership last fall when FSU’s star quarterback, on the cusp of winning the Heisman Trophy and leading FSU to a football national championship, was named in a sexual assault complaint involving a fellow FSU student.

Penn State leaders know well how a crisis can cause an institution to lose its way. The 2011 Jerry Sandusky child-sexual abuse scandal, which led to the ouster of the university’s longtime president and its legendary football coach, Joe Paterno, is still a raw, divisive topic in State College.

“Penn State needs Eric Barron at this time,” FSU athletic director Stan Wilcox said, in explaining why he understands Barron’s decision. “So I can’t fault Penn State or Eric Barron for this. I know that he tried to fend them off for some time. But when a university decides that someone is the right person, they have to make sure they do everything they can to get them, and that’s what they did.

“I think that for Penn State and for him, it is the right decision. So I’m thrilled for Eric and Molly. They will help that community get past all of the negativity and divisiveness, and help Penn State continue being one of the top academic institutions in the country.”

Look no further than Florida A&M for an example of how a crisis can cripple a university. James H. Ammons never recovered from the November 2011 hazing death of a marching band drum major, and resigned as president in July 2012.

Barron’s reaction when Jameis Winston was linked to a rape investigation was to stay the course and avoid a rush to judgment. He told the athletic department to continue to make Winston available for weekly press conferences to talk about football. When the state attorney’s office declared during a nationally televised news conference that there was not sufficient evidence to press charges against Winston, Barron declined to claim victory.

“There was this tendency to say, ‘Yea, he can play!’ I actually said, ‘No, these are all our students.’ This makes it incredibly hard for anyone to come forward if they’re a victim,” Barron said last week. “Look at what all this press and media coverage is like. It’s incredibly important to me to say that we all lost. That’s the truth.”

Working with Robinson

FSU and FAMU share an engineering school, an arrangement created by the Legislature three decades ago. It is one of the most unusual partnerships in the world of higher education, and until Barron’s arrival in 2010 it was about all the two schools had in common despite the fact they are both members of the 12-institution State University System.

Barron and FAMU interim President Larry Robinson created a virtual bridge over the railroad tracks separating the two universities. Barron, Robinson and Jim Murdaugh, president of Tallahassee Community College, formed a partnership on behalf of the region’s economic development leaders, putting together a brochure and pledging that any prospective employer contemplating a move to Tallahassee could find job training for skilled labor at one of their three schools.

Barron invited Robinson to address FSU’s board of trustees in November, the first time the CEO at FAMU had been a welcomed guest at one of FSU’s meetings.

“I think that along with all the other great things President Barron did, fostering this new era of a constructive relationship among these three institutions stands out,” Robinson said. “I think it’s one of his greatest legacies, in terms of how to serve this community as a whole.

“I think it benefits us all to have this collaborative, constructive, we’re-all-in-this-together relationship for the community. It’s never been like this, to this extent.”

Barron voiced praise for Robinson, Murdaugh and their institutions. Working together, he said, benefits everyone.

Healing wounds and raising expectations

Florida State, now on a path to be ranked among the nation’s top 25 public universities, was in dire straits when Barron arrived in February 2010. It didn’t turn around immediately. No school with 41,000 students can change overnight. Brain drain continued for at least the first two years Barron was president — it’s easy to make the case that Penn State snagging Barron is the ultimate example of brain drain at FSU — as the state continued to slash funding for higher education.

Barron dug in and refused to eliminate departments. He created a budget crisis committee dominated by professors. Florida Gov. Rick Scott wanted to connect college degrees to jobs, following a blueprint developed in Texas under a Republican governor with similar values.

Barron raised the ante. He quickly developed a “Florida plan” that he presented to to Scott and has been talking jobs and economic development to such an extent that Scott must have been in awe.

As Florida climbed out of the national recession, lawmakers established benchmarks for rewarding the state’s top performing universities with an additional $15 million a year in preeminence revenue. Only two schools, University of Florida and FSU, qualified.

FSU is poised to hire up to 450 new professors and researchers over the five years that preeminence money is available.

Gary Tyson, a professor in computer science and the current Faculty Senate president, said after Barron’s annual State of the University address in November, that Barron healed deep wounds with FSU’s faculty.

“Eric Barron got a honeymoon period, and frankly he’s never left that honeymoon period because he’s always been a straight shooter with us,” Tyson said in November. “He clearly gets it from our point of view. We’re very happy, and now that we’re not shrinking, now that we’re actually getting resources, we’re that much happier.”

Many students are barely aware of the president of their university. They are much more likely to establish relationships with the professors in their area of concentration.

But make no mistake, said Rosie Contreras, the student body president and a member of FSU’s board of trustees: Barron’s focus on elevating FSU’s academic standing is vitally important to her and many of her fellow students.

Her administration has made working with Barron to improve FSU’s national status a top priority. She is proud, she said, to be the student trustee when the Honors, Scholars & Fellows House is unveiled when the trustees meet March 6-7.

Connecting with the community

Barron is both goal-oriented and people-oriented. He develops relationships, and they in turn help him make things happen, whether it’s on campus, at the Capitol or in the community.

Commissioner Andrew Gillum, the city’s designated liaison to FSU, FAMU and TCC, marveled last week at how Barron insisted that FSU be a partner with Tallahassee. Like Robinson, Gillum was invited to address FSU’s trustees last June.

“It’s the first time I’ve seen the university as engaged in the local community as it is,” he said. “It’s so important that whoever the next leader is there that they buy in or are simpatico with what’s been envisioned with Dr. Barron.”

Gillum noted that the No. 1 item on the list established by the sales tax extension committee is $20 million to begin developing the “Madison Mile,” a cause Barron initiated.

Vince Long, Leon County administrator, was equally effusive with praise for Barron. FSU’s president created a new environment, he said, one that he had never before witnessed in terms of town-gown relations.

“We’ve had this relationship where we would talk once a week and the lines of communication were really open and it trickled down throughout his organizational structure,” Long said. “Eric was a phone call away on his cell phone no matter what the issue was. He elevated the community relations to a level of importance that I hadn’t seen before.”

Forgoing London, reaching donors

Barron told the Democrat that he is still coming to grips with all that has happened during the past two weeks, from his Feb. 9 interview with Penn State’s search committee to his unanimous selection as that university’s next president last Monday.

He was scheduled to teach a class in England this summer at FSU’s program in London. It was to be a general science class, “Earth as a system,” which he won an award for while teaching it at Penn State more than a decade ago. That isn’t going to happen now, nor are many other plans Barron had made.

“One of the things that’s hard is I’m looking at my calendar and seeing all these things I was going to do and now I’m not going to do them,” he said.

Barron doesn’t believe in “unfinished business,” but clearly one of his key initiatives may be in jeopardy now that he is leaving April 2 — the $1 billion capital campaign that he was charged with leading from the time he was hired in 2009.

The FSU Foundation, reinvigorated under Barron, had tallied $527 million as of the end of December, and a public launch for the campaign was scheduled for Oct. 18.

That will not take place if the university hasn’t selected a permanent president, Tom Jennings, vice president for university advancement and FSU Foundation CEO, said. Jennings already is making plans to reschedule the campaign’s public launch.

The president is the face of the university, the individual a donor wants to shake hands with when he or she is writing a check to Florida State. It would not make sense to stage a high-profile, fan-fare filled launch without having a closer in place, Jennings said.

Barron is acutely aware of what his departure means to this critical fundraising effort. At his brief remarks to FSU’s trustees at the start of their emergency meeting Wednesday, he stressed that he wanted to be available to meet with donors and continue their relationship with the institution.

“I want to make sure the most important donors to the university don’t pause and they keep giving,” Barron said following the trustees’ meeting. “The campaign is one thing to worry about.

“It’s hard to tell how fast the board will move on a replacement, but if there’s not a person there installed, then it will be very hard to do the launch.”

Barron said he’s proud of all that FSU has accomplished on his watch. Every trustee who spoke Wednesday about what they were looking for in their next leader, said they wanted someone who would continue the initiatives begun under Barron.

In what was possibly the ultimate compliment to the president they will be replacing, several trustees said they wanted “another Eric Barron.”

“I think we need someone with the same vision, the same work habits, the same foresight and the same leadership (as President Barron),” Trustee Andy Haggard told his colleagues. “I think we need to follow the same path to greatness that Eric has led us on.”